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Practice

19.01.2016

Sweet highlights

Just before the ProSweets fair in Cologne, we are pleased to provide our readers with a short overview of what Schubert has successfully implemented in the past in the areas of confectionery and snacks. Whether crumbly, sticky or fragile – we’ll take on any challenge and will always deliver exactly the right robot tools.

In order for the robots to also ‘see’ what they are doing when grouping and inserting tasty treats and snacks, scanners determine the product’s position and pass on this information to the robots. The 3D scanner developed by Schubert opens up unprecedented possibilities. For example, it recognises a brown sandwich biscuit with brown cream in the product stream whose top part is missing and rejects it. In the case of uniform product density, the TLM Vision System can also determine the weight of each product, therefore enabling the completion of individual product formations within a defined weight range during the grouping process.

Schubert uses the TLM Transmodul for transporting products, boxes and cartons as well as for other functions. The rail-based transport robots move autonomously, making the packaging process considerably more effective. Depending on the product, the modules can be equipped with different transport plates. For example, they can be mounted with a vacuum unit to prevent them from slipping.

The flexibility of our TLM components opens up virtually unlimited application opportunities in the confectionery and snack industry – whether working with pralines, chocolates, cakes or biscuits.

In the following videos, you can see how the individual TLM components work with each other with perfect synchronicity. And viewer beware: you’ll never look at a box of chocolates on a shop shelf the same way again.

A highly flexible, fully automatic chocolate praline packing line: In a ‘pick & place’ process, chocolate pralines with different fillings are packed in plastic trays. The Transmodul transport robot is key to this application’s success.

It has always been a challenge for a packaging machine to grip sticky biscuits. And that is why the Schubert designers developed a special gripper. The packaging system can fill the previously unstacked trays with 900 pieces of cake per minute.

High-performance yet gentle product handling for delicate potato chips: Rectangular potato chips are packed in a flow pack, once the highly sensitive products have been checked for size and quality of shape. The extremely gentle vacuum gripper technology ensures that the snacks are not damaged.

A compact packaging machine for chocolate bars: The system processes different varieties of 200g and 250g chocolate bars and packs them into wrap-around boxes (five formats) or cartons with trays and lids (four formats). TLM F44 robots are used for grouping the bars. This ensures that the high-quality products are not driven into grouping chains at high speeds and put under excessive mechanical stress. Instead, they are individually and carefully placed into stacks and then inserted into Transmodul format parts.